The Blood Runs Cold

In this lengthy interview with the Berkeley Barb in October 1969, two activists within the TWLF—part of its Committee on Liberation or Death (COLD)—analyzed the gains and limitations of the strike from the winter.

John Turner and Oliver Jones attributed the failure of the strike to a lack of support for it among whites—whites who, they noted, had rallied for the cause of People’s Park in the months following the TWLF strike.

At this point in the struggle, Turner and Jones disparaged what they saw as “mojo chauvinism,” or what the Black Panther Party had identified as “pork chop nationalism”: the development of a cultural nationalism that emphasized cultural pride (through the revival of African dress and customs) rather than the need for fundamental social and economic transformation.